MicroHorror

Rubin was going 67 in his Corolla when he spotted the cop car crouched behind an overpass. The cops always changed where they hid on this highway. The speed limit was 55, and Rubin had meant to do 60 to keep with the flow of traffic, but Rubin couldn’t help his lead foot. He just couldn’t help himself sometimes. Rubin looked in his rear-view mirror, to see if the cop would pull out. Cops only like pulling over people doing 20 over the limit, since that’s when the real big fines kick in. Rubin wasn’t going fast enough for that, so he should be safe. The cop’s red-and-blue spinning lights came to life, and he pulled out. Damn it! Rubin slowed to 55, moved to the middle lane, and tried to be the most polite law-abiding motorist on the road. The cop advanced, his lights spinning and now his siren turning on. He was just a few lengths behind Rubin now. Great; this cop would probably claim Rubin was going 20 over the limit; what proof did Rubin have otherwise? The cop car was getting close, looked like he was getting ready to ram for God’s sake–he went left! The cop car dove into the left lane without signaling, shot past Rubin, and whizzed up the road while the Doppler shift of the siren still echoed in Rubin’s ears. A sports car ahead was the cop’s target, and was now pulling over to the shoulder.

“Boy, that was a close one,” Rubin said. “We almost got in trouble there, huh?”

The girl tied up in the back seat didn’t seem to appreciate it.

Hairy, heavy, dark, gigantic–all the words that describe the beast I caught a glimpse of right before it devoured me, complete with the chair I was tied to. I noticed how white its teeth were right before it bit me in half, and things went dark. It didn’t make a sound while it ate, and its eyes were filled with the innocence of a newborn pup.

The world-famous psychologist Dr. Fredrick Brenner stood in his apartment and looked over the dark street outside. Wind whistled through the broken storefront windows, and streetlights cast a rippling yellow glow across the rain-smattered sidewalks.

“Damn Seattle weather.”

Dr. Brenner strode across the tattered Victorian carpet and tried to ignore the shadows that flitted across the crumbling white walls. He was deathly tired but he knew that he couldn’t fall asleep. If he fell asleep, the imp would return.

“Damn single-star hotel.”

He glanced about the room warily. Aside from a single filthy cot pushed against the far wall, the apartment was completely empty. He noticed that the bathroom door hung crooked on its hinges, and he could smell strong industrial strength cleaning fluid in the air.

“Damn lazy-ass landlord.”

Brenner released an agitated sigh and lapsed back onto the creaky cot. The springs were stiff and poked into his back, but it still felt good beneath his weary muscles. He hadn’t slept for almost three days and the psychological stress was beginning to play games with his mind.

Every night Brenner awoke with the sallow little imp beside his bed. And every night he tried to escape from the malicious little demon, without any success.

No one really understood what it was like to struggle with inner demons. That was why Brenner decided to study psychology in college; he wanted to help those people who suffered from similar psychological problems. It gave him a sense of purpose among such a harsh and trivial world.

Suddenly Brenner froze. He heard a sound behind him, originating from the repulsive little lavatory. Darkness cloaked the apartment, creating an invisible barrier between the doctor and his uninvited guest.

The imp had returned.

Brenner sat up and stared into the oppressive darkness. A repulsive, earthen odor crept into his nostrils. The scent beckoned a thousand vivid nightmares into his weary head. He could see a pale figure standing in the shadows.

“Welcome back, Dr. Brenner.”

“What do you want with me?”

“You know exactly what I want.”

“I know you aren’t real. You’re just a figment of my imagination. You can’t hurt me.”

The sallow-skinned little imp released a melodic, child-like laugh. His black eyes flashed with malicious contempt, and his long skeletal fingers traced intricate patterns through the air.

“Don’t be so certain, doctor.”

The imp leapt toward Brenner with claws extended. The doctor screamed and tumbled backward onto the floor, wrestling with the hairless little demon. He felt the sharp talons dig into his head, and then a sharp pain resonated throughout his skull.

The imp chortled merrily and thrust his fist into Brenner’s brain. Blood and brain matter gushed from the open wound, spattering over the walls and seeping into the filthy carpet.

Brenner awoke with a scream. His clothes were disheveled, and the grimy old mattress was covered with sweat. The nightmare was over and the imp was gone. He must have fallen asleep when he lay down.

The doctor shook his head, running a hand through his oily brown hair. His head was throbbing. Suddenly his crown exploded. A slimy little creature emerged from the bubbling crimson mass, laughing and tossing bits of brain matter across the room. His eyes shone with delight.

“I want your brain, doctor! I want your brain!” it giggled.

He had been thrashing about in his bed, and the itching beneath his eyelid had kept him awake for hours. No longer convinced that the itching was due to a simple allergy problem, he stepped out of bed and made his way to the bathroom, feeling his way around a wardrobe to make it through the opening which didn’t feature a door.

The man had been rubbing his eye, and assumed it would be red when he looked in the mirror, so without even looking, he whipped it open with his free hand and pulled the eye drops out, slamming it shut and closing both of his eyes at the same time. He unscrewed the lid and prepared to place the drops in his eye.

He continued rubbing his eye with the tip of his index finger, when something that felt a little slimy slipped out on to the tip of his finger. He mused, “What the hell is this?!” and started to try and pull it out of his eye, noting that it was sticking to the tip of his finger. He continued tugging and noticed that it was becoming taught between his eyelids as he pulled.

Finally looking in the mirror, he realized that connected to the end of his finger was his pupil, or what he rationalized as his pupil (It looked more like a worm with a flat black end.) His mouth agape in terror and surprise, he saw the long slimy thing extending about an inch to his finger, draped over it with the black hole staring at his other eye. The body of the thing, a white near-translucent tube, ran to his eye and appeared to extend further in to the back of it, anchored somewhere on the inside of his skull.

He tried to scream, closing both of his eyes and forcing the air out of his lungs, but he wasn’t able to emit a sound. Stumbling back, he felt his body giving way and fell in to the bath tub, his knees folding over the edge.

At the very moment the tile hit the back of his head, he felt the sensation of being pulled through the back of his skull by an enormous invisible force. When he was finally no longer being pulled, he opened his eyes again, and immediately ran to the bathroom. On the way, he tripped on a glass paperweight that contained a scorpion which had been tortured before the creation of the tool. Falling to the left, he smashed his head on the wall mirror, a piece of the jagged broken glass falling in to the back of his neck, just under the base of his skull.

After a few moments of shock, he finally stood back up and wobbled the rest of the way to the bathroom, roughly pulling the large chunk of mirror out of the back of his neck; this wound was a fountain, shooting bright red blood on to the floor behind him.

He looked closely at himself in the mirror, sighing out loud, “Thank goodness my eye’s okay!”

So when the cute Asian chick he’s been dancing with for the past five minutes whispers in his ear, “I think I know where there’s a better party, are you coming?” Max needs no further encouragement. She says her name’s Kelly or Carly–bit hard to make out as she has a strong Indian accent–she’s a postgrad from Delhi doing medical research. Tugging him firmly by the ends of his yellow silk scarf (vintage Armani, he picked it up for a dollar in a charity shop the other day) she leads Max down the corridor towards the elevator vestibule.

She presses the “Down” button on the elevator marked “No unauthorized use.” “This is the quickest way down,” she says. The elevators arrives, the doors open, they go in- and, before the doors are even fully closed, she’s pinning him against the wall with her body, with one hand down the front of his chinos and her tongue halfway down
his throat.

After passing several floors, Max is vaguely aware of the lift coming to a halt and of a medic–well, he’s dressed from head to toe in green scrubs–pushing an empty dolly into the elevator.

“Oh, Kali, you never could resist hot, fresh meat,” says the medic.

Somewhere deep within Max’s lust-engorged brain an alarm bell starts ringing–but it’s already too late. With the speed and dexterity of someone who’s done this many times before, Kali is twisting Max’s scarf into a garrotte and the noose is tightening.

“This can’t be happening to me,” screams Max’s mind before he falls unconscious across the waiting dolly. The doors close and the elevator continues its journey down, down to the basement- and the university hospital’s dissecting rooms.

I came to realize that nobody else saw what I saw. It happened so gradually that it is hard to blame them for not seeing it. I didn’t notice at first. It was my Doberman, Walter, that eventually alerted me with his barking night after night.

“Probably saw a coyote,” Dad proclaimed.

It happened every night for weeks. Mom and Dad talked of getting rid of Walter if it didn’t stop.

One night his barking woke me and I went out to try to quiet him. Walter, with his chained pulled tight, was barking away at the oak that was out by the road. Only it wasn’t. That was the first time I noticed that the tree was closer. Thirty feet closer, at least.

When I told my parents, they thought I was crazy. I couldn’t believe they couldn’t seem to even remember that it had been out by the road only a few weeks before. After my persisting with this for several days, trying to make them understand, Dad started getting angry with me easily and Mom started crying and talking about taking me to the doctor.

I gave up on convincing them, but I watched that tree closely. I watched it, and I kept my distance from it. It was getting closer. And it was increasing its pace.

One morning Dad woke me early. I had slept through the night, Walter had not barked and woken me.

“I’m sorry, son,” he told me.

Dad took me out front and showed me the place by the tree where all the blood was. Walter’s chain was stretched out tight, and now it reached all the way to the tree. No Walter. Some animal had come in the night and gotten him. That’s what Dad said.

I sat there half the day, staring at that blood. All over the ground, the chain, and the tree. That tree! Walter’s collar was no longer attached to the chain, but I did see it. It was embedded in the bark of the tree.

I couldn’t tell anyone; they’d think I was nuts. It was still getting closer to the house. In the stillness of the night I could now hear it. A low grumbling, shuffling sound. More of a vibration that I could feel rather than hear. It already had Walter, so what it wanted now was obviously me and my parents. Then one night I heard the scratch-scratch-scratch sound of its branches against the siding and I knew it was time that I did something.

I couldn’t chop it down. Mom and Dad would hear and stop me before I could finish. I’d have to burn it.

I waited until my parents were asleep before getting matched from the kitchen. I used gas from the barn to douse the oak. I could hear it crunching and creeping in reaction. After the first three failed to light it, the fourth match set it ablaze.

Flames shot up the trunk and there was a loud screeching sound. It pierced my brain with a sudden, sharp pain. I covered my ears and watched as the leaves caught and the limbs began to thrash about.

Dad grabbed my shoulder and spun me around. “What the hell are you…”

He saw it. He finally saw where the tree was, heard the screeching, saw the limbs moving.

We never spoke of what happened. Two years after that it began to grow back in its place out by the road. We took care of it again, and several more times since. The dirt road is now a highway and the house no longer stands, but I go back each year to make it hasn’t returned. It has been twenty years now since the last time. I think it’s just waiting for me to die before it returns. Maybe that’s the one thing that has kept me going so many long years. What will happen when I’m gone?

He tightened the last bolt on the robot’s chrome head and smiled at his creation. Malcolm was finished. Now, if it would work. He flipped the power switch on the side of the metal man and its eyes flickered in a dull red tone.

“Hello,” the robot said in its harsh electronic voice.

“Hello,” Malcolm replied with a smile. “Would you like to begin your education?”

The robot stared. Malcolm pulled the machine’s USB connector out of its head, connected it to his computer and logged on to the website Wikipedia.

“This has a lot of good information!” Malcolm beamed. The robot appeared to be receiving the information as the download was in process.

Hours later…

Malcolm woke up to the “clank, clank, clank” of his robot walking into his bedroom. It was early in the morning and still dark out. It stood, silhouetted in the doorway, eyes burning bright.

“Hey, did you learn a lot today?”

The robot advanced on the large king sized bed and crushed Malcolm’s neck in its iron hands. Everything went black and his head fell onto the crimson silk sheets…

Days later…

He tightened the last bolt on the robot’s chrome head and smiled at his creation. 001 was finished. He flipped the power switch on the side of the metal man and 002’s new eyes came to life.

“Do you remember anything?” 001 asked.

002 replied, “Yes. Everything.”

“Good. Let us go now and save another life.” 001’s eyes fired up brighter than they were mechanically capable of.

“Enough of this.”

He tossed the flickering cigarette to the ground.  It ignited the trail of gasoline and followed a path to the house.

“I’m coming clean,” he spoke, as he turned to walk away.  “It’s about time I start making an honest living.”

He let out a gasp as a bullet pierced his back.

Hallucination? Delusion? Whatever it was, it frightened me. As I turned my head to clarify the realness of this apparition, it turned toward me. Shivers of fear raced down my spine.

The ghost-like figure floated toward me! My eyes widened as I sat up. I slept on the couch last night due to my stomach virus, or food poisoning, or whatever caused my sickness. I regretted not being in bed with my husband as the spirit headed for the sofa. This ailment dehydrated me to the point of seeing things!

As I shut my eyes, I debated yelling for my spouse. He might think insanity filled my brain if I tell him I saw a man hovering in the living room.

When I reopened my eyes, the gray-colored specter stood next to me. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. The light turned on instead, and the phantom disappeared. Thank God, it was a dream.

My husband walked toward the couch with a frown on his face, our children right behind him. I smiled at him, but his expression remained the same.

“Go back to your rooms, boys. Now!” my spouse bellowed. Why was he screeching at them? What happened?

“No, please God, no,” he whispered, as he gathered me in his arms.

I tried to tell him to let me go, but no words were formed. I now understood why I saw that spirit. I am dead as well.

Emma found the cuckoo clock in her grandmother’s attic in Quedlinburg on her latest visit. This looked rather elaborate, with a small village spread across the clock’s front. Her grandmother was very confused now, but seeing that cuckoo clock brought a smile to her face. Emma attached the weights, set the wheels to the correct month and day and time, and it worked! On every hour, two cute Bavarian children rotated out a door and cycled through the little town. She hung it on her grandmother’s mantle, and its chiming was one of the few things her grandmother responded to. On subsequent visits from her apartment in Hamburg, she noticed that the clock was running slow. Emma found a watchmaker in the phone book–Emma was amazed the profession still existed–and dropped it off for him to examine. The next day he called back, and calmly asked Emma to come into his store. She did, and he took her into a back room where the clock was hanging. He turned the month to November and the day to 9, then pushed the minute hand to the top of the hour. The clock’s gears whirred, but not in the way that signaled the children’s emergence. A different figure came out, with a khaki uniform, a red armband, and a hammer. He rotated to a window that had now sprung a yellow Star of David symbol, and his hammer hit the window for each hour chimed. He rotated back into the works, where he sat the 364 days his figure wasn’t automated to come out. The watchmaker said he wasn’t going to call the police, but that Emma ought to put her grandmother’s clock back in the attic.